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Photography

Delhi seems to be a city of rooftops, ladders and stairs, washing lines and unfinished stuff. To be honest this isn’t a good representation of Delhi and it’s chaos, maybe just a bit of rest for my senses first of all.

These are some pictures of my travels North from Mumbai to Delhi. There are a lot of hours (precisely twenty-eight) in that trip and a lot of landscape goes by. While I was looking out of the window I started thinking about light. In India there is a lot of this as well. But sometimes it is necessary to choose which light one is more interested the outside or the inside light.

What is the important subject? I will be a bit lazy today and leave that choice to you.

When I went to Italy this October just before my imminent trip to India, my dad pulled out of his bag-from-the-past an object that really surprised me, just when I was starting to think my parents could no longer surprise me.

After a customary huge meal, my dad put on the table a bizarre skull-cap with sown on floral decorations, a baffling pattern describable as a blooming Alpine-Judaic mixture. Was this the time for big family revelations? Were we the only remaining survivors of forgotten Alpine Hebrew descendants?

He says with a childlike smile “I want you to have this for your trip to India. My mother used to put it on my head when we walked the Alps.”

My Grandmother’s family relocated in South Tyrol after the war. Her family was exiled from their native Rijeka in the Istrian Peninsula. My Grandmother loved the Alps, although a bit bitter about the exiled bit, my dad a bit less.

I was up in Nottingham last week and it was the first time I finally could get my hands on a scanner. I managed to scan 5 to 6 hours a day then my eyes started to go fuzzy, total scans 120-130, but I might have to re-scan them.
Highlight – I was pleased to mean Jean Baird, great photography lecturer.
On the whole, they were four intense days packed with lots of information.
Some notes for the next scanning session, I need to concentrate on effective work flow, consistent file size and what output I am looking for.
Initially I thought I might go for a big file size especially for the wardrobe pictures (which I would like 2x3m), so I could have them at the ready when needed. But it seems more practical to scan all images at a general 140-180mb, so I have a general size for all and when the occasion presents itself book a flex scanner to get detailed scans. Here are some examples of pictures scanned and problems I have had. They are coming up with strange moray lines, marks and a overall red cast.
This is something similar to Moray lines. not sure what I’m doing wrong.

Strange marks appear on the scan that are not on the negative like out of focus dust:

I’m still a bit confused about what I’m doing. But it’s always this way – very clear ideas until I have to actually do something and then I lose the plot.
I am going towards a good size exhibition. Time to think about ways of exhibiting
Anyway, on with the project, I’m scanning negatives that are part of my conversations project. I’ve got 3 different locations at the moment and bits and bobs from other places that I can maybe use in context.

Bologna PortraitsBank of IdeasFran

Alison was happy with the result and very encouraging. I find conversations with her are always inspiriting and meeting with the other artist is also always very productive.
Andrew came up with some great tips.
Talking to Alison I might have found a solution to the portraits I took of Fran in the RTH. Showing them as a sequence instead as of a singular image. Either using a grid or doing a Final Cut editing of the images so that one follow the other in different speeds, so to reiterate the idea of boredom, time and dialogue.

I went to Photofusion’s Annual Members Photography Show lat night. The show is gaining a reputation for showcasing a diversity of approaches and genres from photographers based in London and further afield. This year continues the collaboration with Hotshoe Magazine which includes the “Hotshoe Photofusion Award”.

Really exiting exhibition I went to last Friday. The most interesting thing is behind the scenes.

Emerging from curator-artist dialogues and the contributions of a group of selected events curators and guest writers, a series of related events and texts has evolved for both the gallery space and online forums.

The works in the gallery exhibition take inspiration from popular culture, sculpture, archival processes and notions of ritual. Through reflective approaches, references to other cultural disciplines and a sense of humour, the works question the veracity of documentation and transcend assumptions about the medium of photography.

This is an innovative collaborative effort of curators, artists and writers that have worked together for months and on a number of platforms before the show.